CHAPTER XI 



WILD-GEESE ON THE SAND-HILLS 



Flanking the marisma and separating it from the dry lands of 

 Donana, there rises rampart-like a swelling range of dunes — the 

 biggest thing in the sand line we have seen on earth. For 

 miles extend these mountains of sand, unbroken by vestige of 

 vegetation or any object to relieve one's eyesight, dazzled — aye, 

 blinded — by that brilliantly scintillating surface, set off in vivid 

 contrast by the azure vault above. 



Should a stranger, on first seeing those buttressed dunes, 

 be seriously informed that their naked summits constitute a 

 favourite resort of wild-geese, he might reasonably suspect his 

 informant's sanity, or at least wonder whether his own credulity 

 were not being tested. Yet such is the fact — one of the surprises 

 that befall in Spain, the pays de Vimprcvu. 



The paradox is explained by the stated necessity in wild- 

 geese to furnish their gizzards with store of grit or sand for 

 digestive purposes. 



This supply, so long as the marisma is dry, they are able 

 to obtain from those raised ridges of calcareous debris (already 

 described, and known locally as vetas) which here and there 

 outcrop from the alluvial wastes. But when winter rains and 

 Hoods have submerged the whole region and thus deprived the 

 fowl of that local resource, they are forced to rely upon the 

 sand-dunes aforesaid and to substitute pure sea-sand for their 

 former specific of calcareous grit or disintegrated shells. To 

 the sand-dunes, therefore, in the cold bright mornings between 

 October and February, the skeins of greylag geese may be seen 

 directing their course in successive files, in order, as the Spanish 

 put it, " to sand themselves" [arendrse). 



A notable fact (and one favourable to the fowler) is that, 

 though these dunes extend for miles, yet the geese select 



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